


Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News

by dancingwithwings



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cheesy 80s Music, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Nico minds the infirmary, Robert Palmer is too catchy to resist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 08:45:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9713960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingwithwings/pseuds/dancingwithwings
Summary: “Doctor, doctor, give me the newsI’ve got a bad case of loving you…”“Damn right,” Nico thinks aloud, then mentally slaps himself for doing so.In which Nico doesn't dance, but nobody else is in the infirmary and the lyrics fit his situation and well, a little 80s music never hurt anybody after all.





	

_“Woah, the hot summer night fell like a net  
I’ve got to find my baby yet…”_

The rest of the line is drowned out by the sound of Nico bashing his head off the table. 

Repeatedly. In time with the music.

Because the _last thing he needs,_ after being stuck in Camp Half-Blood’s infirmary reception for half an hour with _no idea what he’s supposed to be doing,_ is one more 80s romance track blaring over the loudspeakers.

_“I need you to soothe my head  
Turn my blue heart to red…”_

It’s bad enough that Nico has no idea how to turn the awful noise _off:_ his last attempt to fiddle with the speakers resulted in the volume being turned ear-splittingly high. He’s pretty sure even Connor Stoll, who’d been hospitalised for being unable to hear a sound (Nico suspects his brother and a whole load of fireworks in the Hermes cabin) would be able to recognise this abominable melody.

That would be awful enough on its own, yes. But even better, something indescribable has happened to one of the speakers, warping the sound enough to make the voice sound like a hellhound in a washing machine. And washing machines are scary. He has the ruined clothes to prove it.

More wailing bursts through the ruined machinery and Nico winces.

 _I thought Apollo was supposed to be the god of music,_ he thinks miserably. 

But alas, there is nobody for him to complain to, not counting the dozen-or-so demigods who lie suffering through the house. Nobody at all. He’s all on his own, since _somebody_ ¬– not naming names here, keeping things impartial, _definitely_ not because the mention of that certain person makes Nico break out in hives – has left him in the infirmary, in charge of admitting patients and subject to a full playlist of soul-numbing hospital tunes.

 _Take me back to Tartarus,_ Nico thinks listlessly, tapping his fingers on the desk. _Anything would be better than this._

_Thank the gods I was in the Lotus while this stuff was actually popular._

He’s not even sure _how_ he got stuck in this situation. He’d tried to convince that somebody that a son of Hades definitely did not belong in an infirmary – because, let’s be honest, who wants the living embodiment of death hanging around their sick patients – but as usual, he was having none of it. Nico had lost the will to argue about two minutes into the debate.

“Cheer up, Death Breath,” _that person_ had said merrily, bustling around the office gathering med supplies for a house call. One of Lou Ellen’s ‘pig balls’ had seemingly backfired in Cabin Twenty, creating a sticky situation that required quite a few experienced medics on hand. This meant that somebody had to mind the infirmary – and that somebody, apparently, was Nico.

“It’s only for half an hour. You won’t be without me for too long.” At that, he’d winked cheekily, and Nico had pretended to vomit on the desk. “Unless even _that’s_ too much for you to bear.”

Nico had fixed him with his best withering look, fighting the urge to throw a mouse mat at his face. “Believe me, sunshine, without you around I’d live to be immortal. But seriously. You can’t expect your patients to take kindly to a son of  
_Hades_ wandering around when they’re trying not to wind up dead themselves.” 

He’d snorted and pinched Nico’s cheek: Nico tried to forget how much that reminded him of his sister and all things wonderful. Or, y’know, just forget it had happened in general. 

(At least he had something to blame his red cheeks on: most of the time, around this particular person, he isn’t quite so lucky.)

“Nonsense. Who wouldn’t want to see this smiling face in the midst of a medical emergency?” A ridiculously blinding grin lit up the room as Infirmary Boy jammed a stethoscope round Nico’s neck. “There, now you look the part! I’ll be back soon enough, di Angelo. No need to get your knickers in a twist.”

“Stuff it, Solace,” Nico had said, breaking, and that was how he’d found himself stuck in the waiting room, forced to deal with both the shrieking from the speakers and the knowledge that the only reasons he’s here are because 1) he’s _really really gay,_ and 2) since when has anyone ever been able to resist Will Solace? _Ever?_

Seriously. That volume of messy golden hair should be _illegal._

_“Doctor, doctor, give me the news  
I’ve got a bad case of loving you…”_

“Damn right,” Nico thinks aloud, then mentally slaps himself for doing so.

Will. Goddamn. Solace. AKA the demigod who’d left Nico in charge of the infirmary. AKA the person who has – against all hopes and expectations – finger-gunned his way into Nico’s heart, with the help of awful flirting, a mop of windblown hair and (gods help him) a playlist of really awful 80s music. Owner of the world’s most irritating blinding-white smile and a penchant for witty conversation, Will is not an easy guy to resist: if he wasn’t so bloody confused by him, Nico could see exactly why someone would fall for the man. 

(He just wishes it wasn’t him doing the falling.)

“Why me?” he moans pitifully, deeming it necessary to bury his head in the desk again.

Nico di Angelo has walked through Tartarus. He’s raised an army of the dead and fought his way to the Doors of Death, flattening giants and anything else in his path. He’s shadow-travelled a _forty-foot statue_ from Athens to Long Island Sound, yet somehow, the thing to finally overcome him is a crush on Will Solace: son of Apollo and a _hugely irritating, unbelievingly handsome dork._

(Well, most people would call it a crush. Nico prefers the title ‘descent into the depths of hell’.)

So yes. Nico di Angelo, Lord of Darkness and King of Ghosts is head over heels for the _literal embodiment of sunshine_ and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. As if meeting up with Chiron every two seconds to discuss battle techniques and dealing with the various side-effects of redecorating his cabin weren’t enough – he’s sure that somebody’s cursed the coffin beds, maybe a real vampire _has_ slept there once – Nico also has to navigate round the embarrassingly mushy feelings that crop up every time he even lays eyes on the stupid sun boy. 

Which, thanks to Will’s insistence of his presence at the infirmary, is basically _all the time._

 _“No pill’s gonna cure my ill,”_ the voice croons – _Robert Palmer,_ Nico thinks dully, having already raked through a pile of CDs in his attempts to save his eardrums – and he fights the urge to scream over the lyrics. However terrible of a receptionist he already is, yelling probably wouldn’t help. 

Plus half the camp would probably like to hear him scream. Not in a bad way, just a ‘hey, you know Nico di Angelo? The guy who walked through Tartarus and stuff? Well it turns out that his mortal fear is actually 80s rock music. Pretty weird, huh,’ kind of thing.

(‘Half the camp’ includes Will Solace, who really does not need to know about this particular crisis, musical or otherwise.) 

He wonders briefly what Will would prescribe for a case of heartache. Knowing him, the cure would involve bad pickup lines and a whole load of cheesy romance movies.

“Whoever’s getting you down, it’s nothing _The Proposal_ can’t fix,” he’d say with one of those stupid flirting winks, and then his voice would turn deadly serious. “You’re watching it with me, di Angelo. Right now. Doctor’s orders.”

 _And now I’m imagining him talking in my head,_ Nico thinks dully. _Could this get any more hopeless?_

The speakers choose that moment to let out an eardrum-blasting wail, and Nico sticks a fist into the wall. 

_The worst thing is,_ he thinks sulkily, sucking on his knuckles, _it’s not actually that bad of a song._ It’s just the thoughts that come barrelling into his brain with it that he doesn’t want to handle. And the fact that, well, after only a few months getting over Percy (a crush of pretty much _half a decade)_ he’s not quite ready to jump into that unrequited hellhole again. 

He knows that being gay is fine. It’s a little harder to get over the hundred rainbow-hued situations that burst into his head whenever Will walks in the room, however.

At the sound of sick-demigod coughing – _their coughing is louder than this music? What the Hades is wrong with them_ – Nico forcibly extracts his mind from the fantasies he can’t stop himself from indulging in. They’re nothing more than a canoeing date, maybe sitting together at the Hades table – but still, they’re enough to distract him from the real scandal here: despite his insistence upon the music’s ghastliness, his body is beginning to betray him. Although his general opinion of Will’s hospital music is “Hades, even _Charleston_ music is better than this schist,” without his prior consent, Nico’s feet are shuffling beneath the table. 

The urge to get up and dance is overpowering. Even if he’s never done such a thing in his life.

 _It is a rather catchy tune,_ his mind reasons.

 _Shut up,_ Nico reasons back.

Nevertheless, he begins to move a little, awkwardly, trying to pretend he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s never been one for dancing – he does have a reputation to maintain, after all – but once his feet start tapping, there’s no going back. 

Without any idea why or how, Nico di Angelo is dancing in the infirmary. 

_There must be some hypnotic underlying melody,_ Nico decides as he sways his hips a little. _That’s the only reason I’m doing this._

He jumps from side to side and almost laughs at the sense of abandonment coursing through his veins. _It’s like swinging a sword,_ he decides, _only less violent._

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he vaguely recalls some ballroom lessons his mother had taken, all the way back in the 1930s: sessions of skirt swishing, the tap of fancy footsteps. His grandfather had probably allowed the classes in order to make his daughter attractive to suitors, but Nico only ever remembers himself as his mother’s partner: they’d swirl across the floor together, Nico – only eight or so – tripping over his feet and laughing himself silly. The impromptu memory splits his face into a gigantic smile, and the realisation of the ridiculous situation he’s in makes him laugh harder.

Seventy-five years later, he’s shimmying in an infirmary waiting-room as he waits for his crush – a boy, no less, an irritating, stupidly handsome boy – to come back and relieve him of his duties as a receptionist.

 _How times change,_ he thinks drily, as he picks up a mop and spins across the room with it.

(And, well, if he’s pretending the mop is Will, nobody needs to know.)

_“A pretty face don’t make no pretty heart – I learned that, buddy, from the start –“_

The stethoscope bounces on Nico’s chest, and he throws away his last ounce of dignity and picks it up to use it as a microphone. _Screw it._ He turns his attention to belting out a stilted version of the verse, bopping from side to side with his hair in his face and his eyes to the ceiling.

(Maybe this isn’t the first time he’s been stuck in the infirmary, listening to this playlist and trying to figure out a way to throttle Will Solace.)

_“You think I’m cute, a little bit shy –“_

(Maybe he likes this song a little more than he lets on.)

_“Momma, I ain’t that kind of guy –“_

He sincerely hopes that nobody is looking through the infirmary window to see what he’s doing. Being ‘afraid of rock music’ he could deal with, but actually _dancing_ to it? Now _that’s_ an accusation he would never be able to live down.

_“Shake my fist, knock on wood,  
I’ve got it bad, I’ve got it good –“_

In the moments of absolute abandonment, Nico can see himself, whirling about the waiting room like some kind of drunken storm spirit. He’s horribly out of tune, and he doesn’t know half the words. But he’s coming up to the chorus and he knows this bit best of all – sometimes hums it when he’s alone in the cabin, _the lyrics suit his situation, so sue him_ – so he closes his eyes and pours every ounce of energy he has into yelling out the final lines of this gods-forsaken song.

_“Doctor, doctor, give me the news – I’ve got a bad case of loving you,”_

Nico taps his feet and swings around, imagining he’s singing the lyrics right into Will Solace’s freckly face. It’s gratifying, if not a little creepy. He shoves Will from his mind and focuses on executing the next in his series of dance moves.

 _“No pill’s gonna cure my ill,”_ he belts, throwing his hips out and doing some kind of jerky pirouette. A gigantic grin spreads over his face as he stumbles, readying himself for the final line. He’s dizzy and his eyes are still screwed shut, but this is the best time he’s had since thrashing everyone in Capture the Flag last week, and he may be shockingly awful at this but his facial muscles are beginning to hurt from laughing and he knows with absolute certainty that he will be doing this again.

(Or that’s what he was thinking, anyway.)

As the final line plays through the gods-awful speakers, Nico pirouettes across the room, singing at the top of his lungs, and bumps _right into_ Will Solace.

So that is how Nico finds himself in Will’s arms, looking straight into those beautiful blue eyes (the only thing ‘straight’ about the entire situation) with his entire face turning an impressive shade of crimson. Somehow, inexplicably, he’s dipped in a perfect ballroom hold, with the fading notes of a drum roll playing out behind him.

“Nico,” Will says, grinning, “what are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Nico squeaks, and wills himself not to make the floor break into pieces. 

As the seconds tick by and Will’s smile grows ever wider, he finds himself becoming more and more aware of all the places they are touching – basically _all the places_ – and tries (and miserably fails) to take control of his hammering heartbeat and stop that blush from spreading. 

Apparently, dancing takes quite a lot of energy – just as not sagging in Will’s arms takes a hell of a lot of effort.

The gravity of what Will had just watched him do hits him and he fights the need to bury his head in his hands, immediately losing his battle with the blush. “How much of that did you watch?” he ventures warily, wincing at the smirk spreading over Will’s face, and groans when the other boy simply replies “Enough.”

“Don’t just stand there grinning at me,” Nico splutters after a minute or so of awkward silence. “Do something. Anything.”

“NOT THAT,” he shrieks two seconds later, as Will dips him to the floor and spins him ridiculously quickly into an impeccable tango hold.

“I don’t know, dude,” Will says as he takes a remote out of his pocket and flicks the speakers over to some kind of Spanish dance music, “you seemed to be enjoying it twenty seconds ago.”

Nico’s mouth drops open. 

“You had the remote control _all this time,_ ” he splutters, outraged, “and you were _forcing_ me to listen to some 80s garbage. I was _suffering,_ Sunshine Boy. How _dare_ you.”

“Why, what else would you be listening to, _technopop?”_ Will snorts, which effectively shuts Nico up long enough for Will to tango him across the room and back again.

“I thought you were tone deaf,” Nico mumbles as Will spins him under his arm. He still has no idea what they’re doing, but it’s better than dancing on his own, albeit no less embarrassing. His face is also incredibly close to Will’s, which would allow him to count every single freckle on that stupid handsome face, but he’s still high off humiliation and a little too dizzy to care.

“I am,” Will laughs, “but my mom took tango lessons when I was a kid. You’d be surprised how much you can pick up from the sidelines.” 

At any other point in time, Nico would appreciate the similarities, but he is still _very close to Will’s face_ and he fears his grin might split his head in two. Will, it seems, isn’t finished.

“And besides,” he smirks as he swings Nico round, “I’d hoped our first dance would be a good deal more romantic than _Robert Palmer.”_

Wait. 

_What?_

“Excuse me,” Nico splutters, wondering if dancing has resulted in a blood rush to his head. “Was that your idea of a confession, Will Solace?”

“Oh, shut up and dance with me,” Will says, flicking the speakers to some kind of pop song, and Nico has never been more thankful for cheesy 80s music in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> *slams italics button* *regrets it when it comes to HTML*
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! I wrote this all in a day on a high after my exams had finished. Many thanks to my beta, Kev, for putting up with it before I edited!
> 
> Just a clarification: 80s music is one of the best things to grace this earth. I have no grudge against 80s music. Nico, however, is possibly a different story.
> 
> And yes, Rick Riordan confirmed that Nico di Angelo, Lord of Darkness, listens to technopop. Has anything ever been better?? You know the answer, my friends, you know the answer.
> 
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed! More Solangelo should hopefully be on the way soon.
> 
> \- Ish (dancingwithwings)


End file.
